Doctors: Breakdancers Risking Serious Injury

BOSTON — Rapidly spinning while standing on one`s head, back flips onto pavement and other acrobatic moves are the essentials of breakdancing -- and neck breaking and worse, doctors warned Wednesday.

A 25-year-old professional break-dancer, for example, was instantaneously rendered a quadriplegic when he attempted a flip, but landed on his head.

``These acrobatic dance movements are not performed without considerable risk, as evidenced by three recent cases of cervical-spine injury of varying degrees, which occurred while the patients were breakdancing,`` said three New York doctors in a letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The three cases they cited are only a few of the many examples of breakdancers being injured. There was also a well-publicized case of a breakdancer in Chicago being left with no movement from the neck down.